As I’ve said in previous posts, General Mills is heavily
invested in the use of social media, and we utilize it in several ways,
including: marketing, recruiting, and
general product information dissemination.
For example, we use YouTube to demonstrate the many ways our
company seeks to give back to the communities it serves, or to show us engaging
with our customer base at local events like the Minnesota State Fair. Here are
a couple of great examples:
GMI working with Clinton Global Initiative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BccDJqD56E&list=FL-416ZQNyLIvTsUijkSplIw&feature=plcp
GMI at the Minnesota State Fair:
We also utilize Twitter to interact directly with customers.
We also have a GMI blog, as well as various LinkedIn profiles and other
significant efforts.
I would argue that GMI follows the general rules of PR
rather well, as their efforts seem to convey that they:
1.) Know
the market – General Mills has spent 125+ years honing in on its markets – it knows
where they are, who they are, and how to reach them.
2.) Target
media used by our audience(s) – General Mills wouldn't have presence on
Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. if that weren’t what our audience was using.
3.) Keeping
in Contact – We have several ways to connect with the customer, including
e-mail, phone, Twitter, and more.
Finally, I would recommend that GMI do more brand marketing
on social media, as it seems we aren’t pushing that as heavily as we could be.
Additionally, I would advise them push their established Facebook presence, as
it seems we do a poor job of doing that from our main page, or many of our
brand pages.
References:
What types of recommendations might you have for doing more brand marketing? Nice job.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that pushing coupons on some of our popular products like Big G cereals and Progresso soups though Twitter might be a great idea. What better way to get people to buy something than to push it right to their mobile device or computer -- no hassle or fuss -- just a deal on a great product(s).
DeleteI think that the pushing of Sub-brands is definitely an area that many companies need to review their social media presence. It seems that they have a very organized and methodical look for the corporate brand but leave each sub-brand to do their own marketing. This results in certain brand truly lacking in a presence.
ReplyDelete